Alphabet by Inger Christensen

Offered the American-Scandinavian PEN Translation Prize by way of Michael Hamburger, Susanna Nied's translation of alphabet introduces Inger Christensen's poetry to US readers for the 1st time. Born in 1935, Inger Christensen is Denmark's most sensible recognized poet. Her award-winning alphabet is predicated structurally on Fibonacci's series (a mathematical series during which each one quantity is the sum of the 2 past numbers), together with the alphabet. the attractive poetry herein displays a fancy philosophical historical past, but has a visionary caliber, getting to know the metaphysical within the easy stuff of daily life. In alphabet, Christensen creates a framework of psalm-like kinds that spread like increasing universes, whereas crystallizing either the wonder and the opportunity of destruction that permeate our occasions.

Mark Doty's hearth to fireside collects the easiest of his seven books of poetry, besides a beneficiant choice of new paintings. His signature kind encompasses either the plainspoken and the artfully wrought, as certainly one of modern American poetry's so much lauded, recognizable voices speaks to the crises and chances of our time.

“In the autumn of 1970, on the New university in Greenwich Village, a brand new instructor published a flyer at the wall,” starts off Alexander Neubauer’s advent to this amazing booklet. “It learn ‘Meet Poets and Poetry, with Pearl London and visitors. ’” Few scholars answered.

And yet Manuelita you must know if you can: I did not think, I did not think of you: I never thought of you. At night in the deserted square, when wandering clouds coursed toward strange constellations, under the sad electric light I felt my inﬁnite solitude. The grassland rose like a silvery sea in the background, and ﬂotsam of that sea, wretched ﬁerce men, unknown men locked in their sullen will, bloody stories soon forgotten suddenly living in the night again, weaving around me the history of the young ﬁerce city, implacable conqueror, burning with the acrid fever of money and instant pleasures.

The grassland rose like a silvery sea in the background, and ﬂotsam of that sea, wretched ﬁerce men, unknown men locked in their sullen will, bloody stories soon forgotten suddenly living in the night again, weaving around me the history of the young ﬁerce city, implacable conqueror, burning with the acrid fever of money and instant pleasures. I would lose you then Manuelita, forgive me, among the throng of supple young ladies with soft faces unconsciously ﬁerce, violently exciting between the two bands of smooth hair in the immobility of the goddesses of the race.